The language of flowers
by Storybelle
Summary: Greg hates flowers. Hates them. He's stuck in a hospital bed surrounded by them and without the one person he wants there. Nick, ironically, is standing in a flower store... NickGreg, post Play with fire. Injured!Greg and boys in unrequited love. Part 2 coming soon.


Nick knows he's an idiot for standing in a flower shop for half an hour but he can't remember the last time he bought a woman flowers. He _thinks_ that maybe he was about fifteen and it was for Mother's day but that was just a thing in a pot that flowered for a bit and made his mother happy.

But this is an actual bouquet. And the sales assistant is staring at him with a combination of lust and jealousy – because he's in a flower shop and spending way too much time deciding what to buy and when was the last time you saw a guy do that? – and Nick has to be very careful not to catch her eye. Though, damn it, he needs help.

Of course, this is made all that much harder by the fact that it's not a woman he's buying for.

"Do you require any help, sir?" The voice belongs thankfully to an older woman who has just come out of the back of the shop. She is dressed in a bright purple apron emblazoned with the shop's name and logo – Petals by Penny, possibly the dumbest name Nick has ever heard – but as her name tag reads 'Penny' she is obviously the owner and Nick has just about given up. He's getting hay fever just by being in here.

She has thick dark brown hair, streaked with grey, and a serious, no-nonsense look in her eyes. Great. He's probably going to get kicked out for loitering – another thing that hasn't happened since he was fifteen.

"Yes, actually," Nick hears himself say because he is truly desperate. "I need flowers for…somebody." _Somebody_. That's pathetic, Nick. But her expression clears and there's a hint of a smile pulling at the corners of her lips.

"Somebody special?" she says with a glint and Nick knows he's been busted. He knows that when you say 'somebody' you don't just mean somebody. The word 'special' always follows it even if you say it silently. And man, is this person special.

Nick coughs nervously. Time to play the pronoun game. "Yes. A friend. Close friend. In hospital. So I thought maybe flowers…?" Excellent, Nick. You avoided all pronouns and somehow managed to lose any coherency at the same time. Could you sound any more of an idiot?

But her smile just widens. Nick knows what she sees: an attractive young man, well dressed, good manners, with just the slightest hint of an accent that can make any woman in the vicinity go weak at the knees…and he's so desperately in love that he no longer knows what to do with himself. He knows the tips of his ears are going red and that he's fidgeting, tugging at his shirt, shifting back and forth, rubbing the back of his neck, out of nerves. The signs of the very guilty, the caught out and the unrequited-in-love. And somehow he is all three.

"Ah," she says and there's a lot placed in that tiny syllable. "So flowers that say 'get well soon' with just a hint of something more?" Nick flushes, properly this time, all the way down to his toes.

"Hinting…without being overly obvious about it," he suggests. She taps a finger against her lip thoughtfully and then leads him over to one of the rows of buckets, overflowing with blossoms.

"Carnations, maybe? Or pink lilies? Although lilies may be a little bit morbid if your friend is in hospital. Nothing serious, I hope?" Nick struggles with an answer. Very serious in fact and it is the sheer shock of the gravity of the situation, the closeness of _losing_ that someone that had jolted Nick into action after all these years of watching and wanting and waiting.

"An accident. At work," Nick answers finally. "I was out of the building at the time and when I got back…" Her face twists in sympathy.

"That must have been awful for you," she says softly. "Especially as you weren't there when it happened."

Damn straight. Nick had gotten back to see ambulances and the lab in ruins. And while he prayed, '_don't let it be him. Please let him be safe'_ his pleas were in vain. Two of his friends had been hurt that day and while Sara's injuries were minor, her shock at witnessing the accident could easily be soothed by having Grissom fuss over her, looking concerned, his affection for her slipping through in this time of crisis.

Greg had had no one. And Nick wished and wished that he had been there to hold Greg's hand. How scared and alone Greg must have been in the back of that ambulance.

"It was," he says and his voice comes out oddly, his mouth sapped of moisture by the mere thought of Greg hurt. He hasn't been to see Greg yet for that reason alone. He's not sure he can take it because as much as he wants to be by Greg's side, the fact remains that Greg almost died. That is why, temporarily, he cannot look Catherine in the eye without feeling a bright bubble of fury. Nick almost lost Greg and it would have been without Nick ever once telling the lab rat how he felt.

Hence why he was here with pollen up his nose.

"Maybe nothing pink," Nick says firmly. Greg would not appreciate pink, he is sure. Although Greg does own that pink t-shirt and he looks very cute in it…

"Sir?" Penny startles him out of his Greg induced trance. "Not pink?"

"Not pink," Nick insists. She looks surprised and then there's that glint again.

"Maybe red?"

"Now that would defeat the point of not being obvious about it, wouldn't it?" he replies with a glint of his own. She smiles and although he may be a bumbling idiot in love with another that he can't have, he can still charm a woman with the best of them.

"You're from Texas?" she asks suddenly and Nick is thrown by the sudden change of topic.

"Well, yes, actually. Dallas."

"In Texas, yellow roses represents 'true and undying love,'" and she says it so innocently that he is reminded of Catherine when she's teasing him so subtly that he's not actually sure if she's having a dig at him or not.

"Well, if this works out, I promise to come buy yellow roses from you." Of course he could buy yellow roses now but knowing Greg and his weird knowledge of all things weird and mundane he probably knows the meanings of flowers anyway. And if this doesn't work out Nick will never be able to look at yellow roses again. Any roses or things green because he would have moved to Greenland and become a hermit.

"So you're planning on saying something then?" she asks curiously.

"I…I haven't actually thought about it," he confesses as he follows her across the shop to yet more buckets. She delicately raises an eyebrow.

"You might want to think about that," she says pointedly. "You don't want to go in there unprepared. And if you are going to say something then being 'not obvious' kind of goes out of the window, doesn't it?"

Damn woman has a point. Nick grudgingly admits she's thought of something he, the level 3 CSI, hadn't.

"It's just that it's been a few years. Quite a few years," he amends, thinking of the first time he saw Greg on his first night at the lab. "And we flirt and we're close but somehow it's never gone anywhere. I've never said anything."

"But now you're reminded you're both mortal. You almost lost your chance for good," she says, paraphrasing exactly what Nick had been thinking earlier.

"Yes. And I was lucky this time. But in our jobs…next time I might not be so lucky. And I might really lose him for good," he says quietly and barely realises that he has just said 'him.'

"The thing is I want to. But if he says no then I really have lost him." Nick is aware he is confessing his deepest secret to a total stranger but to be honest, he's fed up of keeping it by now.

Penny doesn't say anything for a while, just studies him carefully, and then turns away and busies herself pulling out stalks for him to look at.

"Red tulips are a declaration of love," she explains, shoving a wet red tulip into his hands. "And daisies can mean 'loyal love.' Yet another blossom. He's certain that they're dripping water onto his trousers.

"Snowdrop, primrose, orchid…" Penny is muttering to herself now, lost in a world that Nick does not understand. How flowers can convey what he feels seems ridiculous because he'd have to give Greg a room full of flowers to get it all across. Affection, joy, trust, friendship, desire, hope…all of it is there and more. He's loved Greg for so long that it's become a part of him and he's scared of what will happen when he tries to rip it out and share it with another person.

Share it with _Greg_.

And it's as he's thinking of Greg that his eye is caught by a brightly coloured bloom at the far back.

"What about those?" he says and ends up gesturing with the handful of flowers he's holding. Penny scowls slightly and relieves him of the flowers before turning and looking at where he's pointing. She has her back to him so he doesn't see her expression. She places the bundle of flowers down on the counter and then leans over and pulls a few stalks out.

"These?" she asks and she sounds surprised as well as something else that Nick isn't sure of.

"Yes," he says uncertainly. From the way she was acting it was as if he had suggested giving a bouquet of poison oak to Greg…

She brings a handful over to Nick, holding them out for his inspection. He takes them gently and knows that they are perfect, bright and cheerful but beautiful and vibrant. Just like Greg.

"Yes. These, please." Nick smiles. He has the perfect flowers. He'll go and see Greg tonight before work. And he'll tell him…well, that he doesn't know but it will come to him.

But Penny does not share his joy: she is still silent.

"What?" he asks anxiously. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing," she says simply. "You didn't need my help at all. They're lovely. But do you know what they mean?"

Oh, of course. He's forgotten about the 'flower language.' He almost doesn't want to ask.

"What? What do they mean?" She takes the flowers from him, counts them and then goes back to the bucket to collect a few more.

"Daffodils," she says absently as she places them on the counter and then counts them again before looking up and smiling at him warmly. "Unrequited love."

Somehow that isn't as reassuring as Nick had hoped it would be.

Even if she _is_ correct.


End file.
